Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Blogger tourney time

I took another thrashing on Pokerstars last night. It is starting to get a bit depressing. My new strategy of only buying in for 60BB worked well in theory. With a good hand and opponents on a suspected draw I was happy to push all my chips into the middle. The problem was they kept calling with their draws and kept hitting. I guess I'll just keep plugging away and let variance takes its course.

Signed up for the Pokerstars bloggers tournament which is being held on the 14th October. If you have your own blog, click on the link below to sign up for free. It is basically a $40,000 bloggers freeroll so should be lots of fun. Hope to see you there.

Don't know how many of you follow rugby, but I was gutted to watch both the Wallabies and All Blacks get bundled out of the rugby world cup. How I wish I had some money on those matches, would have made a killing.

Today's Topic: 3 betting

3 betting is the name given to re-raising an original raise in poker. A couple of years ago 3 betting was relatively rare in low limit NL Holdem. People would usually only 3 bet if they had AA, KK or sometimes QQ, or it was a small stack re-raising all-in. This made it easy to get away from inferior hands, with the confidence of knowing that in general the 3 better was holding a very strong hand.

These days 3 betting is becoming a lot more common and is often used as a bluff, especially from late position. It makes NL Holdem a lot more difficult and with a standard 100BB buyin can easily put your entire chipstack in jeopardy. If you are playing a 100NL game and raise it up to $4 from middle position with AQ and a late position player 3 bets up to $12, if you call then there is a minimum of $25 in the pot. If a queen comes on the flop you are in a tricky spot and out of position. If you bet ¾ of the pot ($19) and get called and nothing dangerous comes on the turn then with $63 in the pot and only $70 left in your stack it can be a hard hand to get away from. At the same time top pair top kicker isn't the hand you always want to be committing your entire stack with, out of position, with an opponent who has shown strength. This is why the 3 bet from late position is such a powerful weapon.

I much prefer to be the one making the 3 bet from late position, rather than the one calling it. If I am in late position with AA – JJ or AK - AJ and there is action behind me I will nearly always 3 bet in this situation. This way I am representing a huge hand and will have position for the rest of the hand. The one thing to remember when 3 betting is that you have to price low pairs out of the pot. I f you are playing NL100 and get a $4 raise in front of you there is little point just raising it to $8, this will give most hands the right price to call you cheaply and bust you when they hit a set on the flop. If 3 betting in this situation you need to raise the pot to at least $14, with one caller behind you, to price them out of the pot. Often raising this much with AA will mean that you don't get any action, but it will pay off in the long run.

With NL Holdem becoming increasingly aggressive, you need to adjust for this with your play. By 3 betting more often from late position, you are making the decisions a lot tougher for your opponents.

Today's Link:

If you have your own blog sign up for the Pokerstars bloggers freeroll here. Look forward to playing you all on October 14th.

2 comments:

Big Black Dog said...

hi dazza,good piece on the 3 betting strategy,allthough i only play girly stake stt's a re raise like this can certainly pay dividends in the right position. truly sorry that Aus & the All Blacks lost to us 'inferior' norterh hemisphere teams!!!!!!! ive linked you up.appreciate if you cd do the same. cheers mate.

Big Black Dog said...

shame i can't spell northern!!